Peaceful Demonstration against religious exclusivism at UN

Chaitra Krushna Trutiya

Many people from different religions protested against conversions in USA. But what about Hindus in India, who do not even resist on conversion of Hindus? Indian Hindus should learn something from people protesting against conversions! – Editor

Press Release

New York: The Forum for the Protection of Religious Pluralism held a peaceful demonstration outside the United Nations headquarters during Pope address to United Nations on April 18, 2008.

A small group of people from around the US joined the demonstration to bring public awareness of religions that have been victimized by aggressive proselytization campaigns that are grounded in religious exclusivism, which is there is only one way to God and all other ways are wrong and even evil that needs to be destroyed.

The demonstration sought to highlight how the Catholic, Evangelical and Pentecostal Christian missionaries looking to increase their numbers at any cost are having tremendous success in recruiting new converts by closely linking social services with deceptive and exploitative proselytizing.

The demonstrators carried placards with messages of how deceptive proselytizations destroys cultures, create hatred among families, communities and the country. The messages brought attention to sayings by Mahatma Gandhi calling the religious conversions conducted by missionaries as the deadliest poison that lethally destroys cultures of the world. It also highlighted deceptive practices used by missionaries today, Goa Inquisition in the past as well as the Canadian holocaust where thousands of native children were separated from parents and murdered in catholic and other residential schools during last 100 years to grab their land.

The forum website www.protectreligions.org has wealth of information from leading figures in the world highlighting the activities of missionaries and the atrocities committed across the world in the name of religion rooted in exclusiveness. It also contains a passionate appeal to all Americans how their donations are being used to coerce conversions during times of natural calamities, how children in schools (build with their donations) are told their parent’s religion is wrong and how systematically the structure of the establishments in each country is bought to coerce the rest of the population to convert. The videos on the website include ‘Bad Manna’ that showed how the new converts in Gujarat, India are asked to prove their conversion to new religion by stepping on the Gods from the religion they converted from (Hinduism).

Additional information including photos of demonstration is available at http://protectreligions.org